The Chris Moeller Archives

The actor's actor

One of the most poignant scenes ever filmed appears very near the end of "The Godfather, Part II." The middle Corleone brother, Fredo, who we've gotten to know over the course of six hours and two films, is about to be fatally sanctioned as part of his younger brother's peregrination in losing his soul. As a child, his mother used to tease him that he was left at the front door by gypsies, and he's been passed over as head of the family crime business after never gaining the respect of his father and his peers.

It's not the famous film's most famous scene, but it's one of my favorites. Fredo is fishing with his nephew, and he confides that, as a boy, he once went fishing with his father and brothers and was the only angler in the boat to catch any fish. His secret of success, he tells the boy, was saying a Hail Mary every time he cast his line. It's a tender, final moment for a vulnerable and deeply-wounded character of such weak temperament and constitution that he's really been quite unlikeable throughout despite being presented to us opposite much more barbarous family members. For that one fleeting day on a fishing expedition years before, we're told, Fredo Corleone stood tallest in his family, and he never forgot it.

It's a grand testament to the actor that portrayed Fredo Corleone that few people today know who he is even as his character has become iconic. The actor was John Cazale and he was one in that epic generation of New York stage actors that exploded in films in the 1970s, a group that included, of course, Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Robert DeNiro, each of whom would be Cazale's co-stars in at least one film. Cazale died of cancer in 1978 at the age of just 42.

I just finished watching a 2009 documentary on Netflix entitled "I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale." It's not deeply revelatory as to the man's life, as I had expected. It's really just about his work on film. Even his more extensive experience on the New York stage gets little attention, probably because the nature of the theater medium is that there aren't any clips to present. Like his life, the documentary is all-too-brief-- only 40 minutes, but highly-recommendable. I kind of like that we don't find out much more about him actually, other than his approach to his art. He was an actor who seemingly took great pride in giving us only the characters that he projected on the screen.

Cazale survived to work in only five films over a span of seven years, but they are five films of almost-ridiculous superiority. Chronologically, they were "The Godfather" (1972), "The Conversation" (1973), "The Godfather, Part II" (1974), "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975), and "The Deer Hunter" (1978). The five films were each nominated for Best Picture and they garnered a combined 40 Academy Award nominations, surely a record percentage for any actor in the history of Hollywood, yet none of the nominations went for Cazale. "I Knew It Was You" enlists the contributions of virtually every living, high profile collaborator Cazale ever had on film. Pacino, Streep, DeNiro, Gene Hackman, Francis Ford Coppola, (now the late) Sidney Lumet, Carol Kane, and John Savage, as well as the playwright Israel Horovitz, all offer their insights into Cazale. Clearly every person he worked with felt it important to participate in a project that would bring his work back to public attention.

posted by CM @ 6:52 PM